Echizen Ryoma

1. His first memory was of tennis.

He wasn't playing, because he couldn't even walk then; no, he was sitting on the couch of their small flat back in America. A match was on the screen and he was glued to it like a normal toddler was to Blue's Clues. The little ball went back and forth, back and forth, and his eyes flicked across the screen with its every movement. Outside his father was lying in the grass, one hand flipping pages in a dirty magazine and another bouncing a tennis ball in time to the one on the television, though the old man wasn't looking. If that wasn't a clue that the sport was going to dominate his life, Echizen doesn't know what is.

2. It wasn't that he didn't like girls, he just chose to ignore them.

In fact, Echizen was well aware of girls. He was well aware of their assets too, and he was completely perfectly straight despite the teasing he got from Momo-senpai. He just chose to ignore them. After all, they were rather loud and squeaky most of the time. They demanded you give them attention and, if you didn't, they stormed off in a huff and expected you to devote more of your time to them as you consoled them. It was far too messy for Echizen, and he knew very well that most of the time he spent playing tennis would be gone in favor of trying to keep a rabid female from biting his head off.

3. Karupin was his "partner in crime".

Though many people liked to think of him as an innocent little angel (especially his parents, though they denied this), he'd had a real prankster streak when he was younger. On more than one occasion Echizen had smuggled Karupin to school (or the cat had simply followed him) and the two of them had pulled a number of nefarious pranks. Even now, Echizen still got grief over the time in second grade the two of them had stolen the first graders' water colors and painted across the brand new carpeting in the Kindergarten wing during lunch break.

4. He hated everything grape flavored except for Ponta

Real grapes, grape candies, any other grape soda – absolutely anything with grape in it Echizen refused to eat. (This had posed a number of concerns for his fangirls the first Christmas he'd been at Seigaku, because they'd bought him a large number of grape-flavored things after observing his Ponta addiction.) The only reason he'd tried the Ponta in the first place was that he'd been practically dying of thirst, it was nearly a hundred degrees out, and his water bottle had long since been drained. With his last bit of money, he pressed every button to find every selection sold out, except for that one. Disgruntled, he'd received the drink and – after finding it oddly refreshing – it had been the beautiful beginning to a life-long love.

5. He had been offered the opportunity to go train professionally before he had even graduated middle school.

The letter and phone call had come at the beginning of August, right before Nationals (because they were still good enough to make it, thank-you-very-much), informing him that he was being considered and that there would be a scout there. The day after, he'd received another phone call and a meeting had been set up. A scout who sounded suspiciously German asked him a number of questions before leaving his card and assuring Echizen that the deal was on. If he was to take it, he would have to fly in "immediately" (a load of lies, Echizen later found out from Tezuka), but the training and facilities were top notch and the idea was something he turned around and around in his mind over and over again, even after he had denied it.

6. He had refused

There were a number of reasons behind it, really. For one, his mother wanted him to continue with his studies. Though she had married a tennis man and knew even when her son was young that he was going to be one as well, she had set down the firm ground rules that he would get an education. Tennis didn't last forever, and it could end even sooner if one got injured, so she wanted to make sure he had a sound education to fall back on. ('Besides,' she had said, 'that way you won't end up like your father.' And there was much complaining from Nanjiroh.)

His father had also discouraged the idea, which had confused Echizen at first, but the old man had proven him wrong. "Why would you want to become uniform and boring?" the old man had asked one day as they were sitting out in the garden, Nanjiroh's attention divided. "You want t' go? Then go. But when the top competition has been watchin' you train day after day, you're not gonna be able to shock 'em, seishounen. You'll just become part of their project, instead of running up from behind and hurtling over the crowd."

The comment had sealed his decision.

7. He considered Momo-senpai his best friend.

And though he'd never actually voiced the loyalties to the spiky-haired boy a year his senior, he knew the teen knew. While he'd originally been a bit irritating, his more-than-confident aura bugging Echizen, the smaller boy knew that he gave off the same one. They'd been competitive, but eventually they'd learned to collaborate. Perhaps it was that first doubles match on the street courts (and admitting to Momo, the first person aside from his parents who knew, that he'd never truly played doubles before) or perhaps it was the fact that he could con the boy into buying him burgers, but before Echizen had realized it the two of them hung out whenever free time was available, whether they were playing tennis or watching a movie or simply laughing over some stupid anime.

8. His hat was a gift from his father

He'd received it after winning his first junior tournament at the age of eight. Echizen had seen someone else there wearing one, someone older who wasn't in the tournament but who had displayed impressive tennis skills, and Echizen had fallen in love. He had his own fair share of caps, of course, but they were all fake despite their alleged brand-name-ness. This cap, though, he could tell was authentic, and so when his parents (read: mother, because his father had immediately told him after he won that he 'could have done better') had asked him what he wanted as a congratulations gift, he'd requested one of the same kind. The maker was Fila, his favorite, and it had taken his father ages and a number of contacts to find an authentic one, but once they'd tracked one down Echizen took it everywhere with him.

9. He'd been thrilled when his parents told him they were moving back to Japan.

He'd always embraced his heritage, spending far more time on his work for his once-weekly Japanese school classes than on his English or math lessons. The entire culture had fascinated him, and he was just as fluent in Japanese as he was in English growing up, if not more. When given the choice he always picked the Japanese option instead of the American for food, despite his father's complaining, and he had even smacked a classmate once in grade three for making a racial joke about Asians, despite the fact that the kid was one himself. The few times they'd gone back on short visits to see family, he'd treasured, and so though he'd masked his emotions when his parents told him they were moving, internally he'd lit up like a brand new Lite-Brite.

10. He'd developed a less-than-healthy obsession with a number of tennis players.

Though he'd hated admitting it, it was true. It had begun with his father, of course, and the goal of beating him. That goal had been pushed into his head – beat into his head, he supposed he could say if he was feeling punny – for as long as he could remember. His father had always teased him about it, and so Echizen had set out to get the better of him. This obsessive nature had transferred to Tezuka the first time he ever played his captain on the courts in secret. The moment Atobe had defeated Tezuka had switched his obsession to the other, narcissistic teen, now that Echizen looked back at it what he had done during those times could probably have been considered stalking. He'd even developed a weird passion toward Rikkai's Junior Ace after his unfortunate match with the devil boy.